art are in the _Volks-Sage_, the _Volkslied_, and the dance, and the
masses have always been true to him. He makes it his boast that while
intellectuals were raging and warning men not to heed his siren-tones,
the public in Germany, France, Italy, England, wherever the
performance was tolerably adequate, paid no heed, but invariably met
him with the warmest enthusiasm.

Jakob Grimm, in his essay on the _Meistergesang_, illustrates the
deep and pensive innocence of the _Volkslied_ by the story of the
infant Krishna, into whose mouth his mother looked and beheld within
him the measureless glories of heaven and earth while the child
continued its unconscious, careless play. "Such," he continues, "is
the completeness (Ganzheit) of Nature as compared with the halfness
(Halbheit) of human effort."

The condition for the growth of truly popular art is that society
shall present a coherent whole, the upper and lower classes united in
a bond of common sympathy with a feeling of brotherhood between them.
English society was not always so divided as we see it now. We possess
a wealth of popular song which has come down to us from mediaeval
times, a heritage nobler than that of any other nation; But can it be
said that our national life is in the smallest degree inspired by
these songs? They have indeed latterly become a fashion; we collect
them, arrange them with pianoforte accompaniments, listen to them at
concerts. It is a mere fashionable craze, like that for "the simple
life," and differs in no whit from that ridiculed by Wagner in the
Italian opera, and in Meyerbeer, as an attempt to extract the perfume
from the wild flower that we may have it conveniently to put upon our
pocket handkerchiefs and carry about with us, to enjoy the sweets of
nature and care nothing for the soul. To know the _Volkslied_ we